I look forward to meeting you someday. I was reading your writings this morning; moved by how you reminded the Galatians in private conversations, that you worried you might be (or had already) run in vain.[i] You did not run in vain sir. In fact, here over 2,000 years after you penned that concern, hosts of others have completed successful missions guided by the many things you spoke and wrote of then. I’m not writing to thank you for being a great man. I sense in the tone of your writing you wouldn’t want that. I am writing you to thank you for caring enough about what you saw, heard and realized to pass it on. I know you didn’t do it so someone would speak (or write) later about “that great guy, Paul.” You taught because you knew Christ alone is essential. And you preserved your teaching in writing,…
2021 March
Anyone who has embarked on safety or security planning understands the risk matrix. The various models all show measures of likelihood (probability) of a specific risk in one direction compared with cruciality (impact) in the other. The process is an attempt to understand the crystal ball of risk. Some low probability things deserve extra attention due to the high impact they would have. It’s no different than life-vests and being trained to use them on an airplane. How many people have ever had to use the life-vest under the seat? Very few. But they are there, and those of us who are frequent flyers could recite the use instructions from memory. That is why church security operators and trainers should continue training for deadly force incidents. Certain parts of the following really happened. Here’s the scenario; You’ve been told by the family of a man outside your church that he has…
I grew up on a small farm at the edge of a small town. Next to our own place, Dad leased an adjoining parcel to pasture cattle. A full ½ mile of the Ninnescah River ran through that leased pasture. I spent my formative years exploring the Ninnescah. I knew it and its fur, fish and game well. My wife is from a farm upstream where the South Fork of the Ninnescah originates. Regarding my life, a river runs through it. The Ninnescah was named by the Osage Indians native to south central Kansas where we lived. The name means “good spring water.” When the river would flood, I would canoe it. Teenage boys seek out danger and some of my closest brushes with death were on that flooded river. One I recall more than others. As my friend and I came around a dangerous curve in the swollen river,…